At our program \u201cFostering Our Future: Mentoring Young Women\u201d there were more than 25 speakers and twice as many listeners. Teens from every city high school and several suburban schools spoke, as well as young women from Onondaga Community College and the State University of New York at Cortland. Teens who were new to this country were also represented; they came from the Congo, the Gambia and Thailand. There seemed to be almost instant rapport among this diverse group of young women as many of them chatted together prior to the start of the meeting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Janet Donoghue and Daryl Files welcomed our young guests,\nand asked them to introduce themselves by name, school, and grade. Janet then reminisced\nabout her life and how it changed from the 1950s and 1960s through the 1970s,\n1980s and 1990s. The young women listened politely as the older WTB members\nsmiled and nodded in shared remembrance of the cultural transformations over\nthe decades. Janet\u2019s point is that life is very different for young people\ntoday, and as adults, we need to hear firsthand from teenagers what it is like\nto be young today. She asked them to tell us how they cope, and what they need\nfrom us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Janet then introduced Tanya Atwood-Adams, Sabra Reichardt,\nHetty Gingold, Danya Wellmon, and Judy Antoine as group facilitators, and asked\neach of the women and girls to join the facilitator who shared the same colored\ntab, handed out as we all arrived. The groups then found separate spaces around\nthe building where they could listen as teenagers shared their insights and\nperspectives on a variety of issues while adults focused on listening to our\nyoung women. Topics included home and family, schools, drugs, sex, gangs, teen\npregnancy, new technology, and life goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because the important action at this meeting happened in\nfive different groups, there was a wide range of experiences, and it is\nimpossible for these minutes to reflect it all. In later reports from groups,\nthe following points were made: Parents should make a concerted effort to have\ndinner with their children. At first, race wasn’t seen as an issue but further\ntalking brought out the fact that free time is usually spent in segregated\ngroups, for example in the lunch room. Our teens felt safe in school. But other students expressed feelings of being trapped in\ntheir buildings because of the cameras that are everywhere and the need to have\npre-signed passes to go anywhere. Important dialog occurred between the\ngirls from different schools, comparing notes about their school differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dances were difficult for those\ngirls who didn’t want to \u2018grind\u2019 with the boys. They end up dancing with\ngirlfriends. The girls felt that they had support in their lives, not\nalways through parents but often through their school or church. The girls\nspoke about personal topics to mothers, loved their fathers but had no\ntalking-about-important topics with them. The pressure from boys in school to\nhave sex was annoying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A most touching moment came when a\nsenior stood up to say that this experience was wonderful because grownups\nusually don’t listen to young people without judging, and don’t ask their\nopinions. The girls were delighted that mature women wanted to know\nabout them. \u201cWe were just really getting going when it was time to stop.\u201d \u201cI\ndidn\u2019t ever think adults would really be interested in listening to us.\u201d The\nadults were pleased at the teens\u2019 openness and willingness to share their\nopinions, goals, and challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the groups returned to the main meeting room, Daryl\nintroduced Stephanie Breed, a junior at F-M High School. Stephanie is the\nfounder and primary organizer of Books Are Food For Thought, which gives books\nto children who receive free meals from local agencies. While volunteering at a\nlocal food kitchen, Stephanie realized that families that can\u2019t afford to buy\nfood for their children certainly can\u2019t afford to spend money on books. She\nbegan collecting books donated by family, friends, church parishioners, Honor\nSociety members. Two Fayetteville-Manlius middle schools have held book drives.\nShe has now given away more than 2000 books to more than 200 children at ten\ndifferent locations throughout Syracuse. See her website at www.booksarefoodforthought.org.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then Daryl introduced Jessie Keating, the youth minister at\nSt. Lucy\u2019s Catholic Church. Jessie told us about the arts and enrichment\nresource for after school programming on the near West Side, with plans to\nexpand to the South Side. The program recruits high\nschool youth to help provide low-income, inner city Syracuse children with\nopportunity to learn arts, languages, music, dance, culinary arts, theater, and\nmore. For more information, go to www.ImagineSyracuse.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After all of the speaking and listening, we gathered in a\ncircle, singing along to the Miley Cyrus recording, “The\nClimb.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As many of us mingled and munched on snacks, many of the teens settled down to plan a follow-up meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Life is very different for young people today, and this time of dialogue allowed us to hear firsthand from teenagers what they are experiencing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-7494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programs","tag-dialogue",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7494"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9659,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7494\/revisions\/9659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}